A sign in front of the Globe-Miami Walmart shopping center, just as drivers turn in off Highway 60, heralds the spot as the future site of a Cobre Valley Regional Medical Center (CVRMC) clinic – a project which, after some delay, is moving on to its next step within the month.

That project is hardly the end of the hospital's plans, though. CVRMC is working on not just one, but three, clinics in the Copper Corridor – projects that are in different stages of completion, but all moving forward.

The Highway 60 clinic, when finished, will be an urgent care-type facility with evening and weekend hours, for same-day appointments and sick visits. “It's going to be another option for people in the community who need immediate care or medical attention without the need to make an appointment or to go to the ER,” said CVRMC Public Relations Manager Nick Smyers.

The 4,320-square-foot facility will include five examination rooms, a procedure room, imaging services, and some lab services.

There was one snag in the project, however. The site was in a designated floodway, which required CVRMC to approach the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a map revision to change that designation. Known as a Letter of Map Revision (LOMR), that document was issued July 29, 2024, paving the way to draw up plans for the clinic.

Smyers said the building's floor plan design is now finished. The next step will be architectural design, and should begin within the month. Smyers said actual construction was anticipated to start in the first half of 2025, approximately three years after the project was conceived.

A much bigger facility at the main CVRMC campus, on Hospital Drive in Globe, is also in the works. This planned clinic will be a two-story, 45,000-square-foot building that will consolidate all of the hospital's family practice clinics. CVRMC Chief Clinical Operations Officer Frank Stapleton said it is in the floor plan development phase, with construction anticipated to start in March or April 2025.

The third new clinic, and the one closest to receiving patients, will be around 22 miles from Globe, in the town of Kearny. Stapleton said completion of that facility was anticipated by the end of this year “and we are on schedule.”

The new Kearny clinic will be a 12,684-square-foot, one-story facility on Tilbury Drive. It will include10 exam rooms, two procedure rooms, an occupational medicine room, physical therapy, a pharmacy, EMS quarters, a lab, an X-ray room and, in the future, a CT room. Its opening is scheduled for early January 2025; however, the Arizona Department of Health Services will need to inspect the site before licensing.

“We've been talking about Kearny for at least five or six years,” said Stapleton. CVRMC has operated a clinic in the town since 2008, starting in the old hospital. In order to demolish that building and make room for the new construction, they received a brownfields state response grant through the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. Groundbreaking for the new clinic took place in October 2023.

“We're excited to expand capacity and create more services,” said Stapleton.